On Aug. 28, 1963, two "brother priests'' from Syracuse joined hundreds of thousands of Americans, mostly black, marching on Washington, D.C., for jobs and freedom. The Revs. Philip and Daniel Berrigan were so moved by the event that upon returning they wrote a lengthy letter to The Post-Standard reporting what they saw and heard and felt and learned.

The letter - unearthed from the archives by columnist Sean Kirst -- resonates 50 years later. (Read Kirst's 2002 column about it here.) For all that has changed since then, not least a black man in the Oval Office, for the African-American community in Syracuse much has stayed the same.

Below is an excerpt of the Berrigans' prescient letter.

It is very hard to believe that Americans will ever be the same again, after Aug. 28. In face of this massive purpose and dignity, can we return with quiet consciences to unchanged lives?

More to the point of this letter, what difference will the Washington march make in Syracuse? Will the city continue to go on its old way? Will Negro families seek decent homes, and seek in vain, during months of frustration, as though they were displaced persons wandering in no-man's land? Will the realtors, the banks, the men of influence in the community, remain silent in the face of American need?

Will Negro schools, Negro streets and neighborhoods, Negro jobs, continue to be the poorest, the shabbiest, the least skilled, the worst paid? Will the same vicious circle continue to hem in Negro lives -- a circle that condemns them to disease, ignorance, unemployment, hopelessness? The answer to these questions can be given only by the people of Syracuse. The answer can also be refused by them.

The city can return to its old attitudes; the city can stifle Negro hopes in the jungle of the inner city; the city can continue to ignore the deadly illness it bears within itself -- an illness endemic to white men, a disease which is always fatal. We mean the illness called hatred and indifference and neglect of the neighbor.

If these things should happen, we urge our Negro people not to bear with them. We ask them to save us from ourselves, to continue to disturb our cowardice. We ask them to continue their picketing, their sit-ins, all the forms of peaceful protest which they can devise. And we ask them to do this in the name of their love for Syracuse -- since we must all love our community too strongly to allow indifference and repression to destroy it. And we earnestly ask that white Syracusans will support and join in these efforts -- efforts which are both a civic and a sacred service.

Pope John has said that the man who has certain rights, has also the obligation to claim those rights. Such a statement, from such a man, makes it very hard for the "gradualists" to hold their ground. Indeed, it is strange that men who have received all their rights intact by accident of birth, who have never had to fight -- for a job, for a decent home, for a vote, for a seat in a bus, for a cup of coffee -- how such men can stand aside and exhort others to patience.

One is reminded of the gospel story of the good Samaritan. Undoubtedly the two men who saw the wounded man lying in the ditch, and passed by, had some such statement on their lips -- "be patient, hang on, help will come . . . " And one is led to ponder; who indeed, before God and history, was in greater need -- the man in the ditch, or the men who went their way?

Once more, our gratitude to The Post-Standard, and to the people of Syracuse. It is our prayer that through the earnest, unselfish efforts of all, our city may shortly become a model before the world of our regard for freedom. May we come to understand that freedom is neither a luxury for the few, nor a
dead letter; that it cannot be bought, sold, or withheld by those who possess it, and that those who help others to freedom have themselves taken the first step toward becoming free men.